Monday, 4 August 2008

Helensburgh Half Marathon

In the absence of any local hill races, and after a hard day's geographing on Bute yesterday, I decided to get up horribly early on a Sunday morning and head over to Helensburgh.

The weather seemed fine to start with. Dry, fairly warm, and a slight headwind for the first few miles. However soon after the race started the rain began - light at first, then unremittingly torrential.

For the first couple of miles I ran with Lindsay Cunningham and John McMillan, until I slowly lost touch, and was caught by the next group lead by Nick Reid. I tucked in with this crowd until the turning point near Faslane, and then ran with Clyde Marwick until about 10 miles, until we were being closed down by several other runners. I decided to latch onto Gerry Graig and Iain Cullen, and then had a good battle during the final mile as the pace ramped up, and 4 of us just squeezed in under 1:20. I was 14th in 1:19:54.